The Lure of the Hole

[pwhole]

It's shameless promotion time.

As many are trapped at home in a dark and gloomy winter with little or no caving to relieve the tedium, it's probably worth a reminder about the 'special album' I made with Domee last year, The Lure of the Hole, especially if you haven't heard it yet. Recorded entirely underground in Castleton using only natural cave sounds (and us, occasionally), the six tracks range from meditative bliss to disorienting confusion - just like real caving, but cleaner - and are well worth half an hour of your time. It's all presented in 3D sound, so headphones are much better than speakers if you can manage it. You get three streams of each track for free, but it's only ?6 to buy the whole album, and you can maybe help keep our rickety barge afloat. I have a digipack CD cover ready to print 

https://double-w.bandcamp.com/releases

There's a short essay by me on the aesthetics of cave sound to read while you listen:

https://www.pwhole.com/popups/cavesound.htm

And the last issue of The Derbyshire Caver also had a feature on the sound recording and the workshop we ran at Hidden Earth:

https://thedca.org.uk/publications/newsletters/send/3-derbyshire-caver/145-the-derbyshire-caver-no-153

And the real hep cats are now strutting our gear on the street

 

[ZombieCake]

I have a digipack CD cover ready to print

Does that mean if I send you some money you can send a real actual CD with nice picture so I can import to iTunes and also play on my CD player?
What a fantastic project.

 

[pwhole]

Hahah - I wish. Sadly I'd need more than one copy to make it economical, unless it was home-made! It's a shame as it would be nice to have an actual product you could hold, but at the moment it's only feasible in the realm of the internet. It took us months to put together - I lost count of the number of trips we did to record it all, but it was a lot.

 

[ZombieCake]

OK, bought and downloaded anyway. I like it. 
Recall a loooong while back a CD I think was titled something like More People Have Been to The Moon or similar. 
The Mendip Caving Group was also involved in an arts project (more visual than audio) a year or so ago.  This sort of thing is to be encouraged.

 

[pwhole]

Thank you - it's much appreciated.

Actually the first recording I did at Peak Cavern was in 1985-86, when I was working with a group on a Fine Art degree course at what was then Sheffield Poly, now Hallam University. I 'created' an instrument using a megaphone - the type with the separate mouthpiece on a cable. If you stuck the mouthpiece at the front and pressed the button it created feedback - but a beautiful pure electronic tone, and it shifted in octaves as you moved it away. With a bit of practice you could play jazz. A test session in the General Cemetery in Sheffield at 2am proved its range, bouncing it off the Hallamshire Hospital a mile away with an obvious echo, and bringing several police cars as an audience, though we all escaped via the shadows. So I later did a 'solo' with jackdaw accompaniment in the gorge outside Peak Cavern. I only just managed to digitise this from the only cassette copy.

The other session was a group effort in the Great Cave, playing a bunch of percussion instruments that were eventually used in a track - again, this is on cassette, but I know better masters exist and my friend Justin in The Netherlands has those. We're still discussing releasing all this stuff, 34 years later, but we suspect the world's still not quite ready for it.

There's some info about the various performances and videos we made on my friend Nick's website. It's a long time ago, so be tolerant. This Heat was done in the middle of the miners' strike collaborating with some NUM folk, so it got quite exotic for all of us. Luckily my Rotherham upbringing gave us some much-needed credibility

https://nickcopefilm.com/2013/09/21/fabricata-illuminata/

 

[Pitlamp]

Recall a loooong while back a CD I think was titled something like More People Have Been to The Moon or similar. 

That was produced by the CDG's Steve Thomas who has a small recording outfit called "Musicave". Electronic music with sumpy background sounds.

Here's more information: https://musicave.co.uk/reviews/

 

[pwhole]

This is fascinating - I may have to try and get a copy, especially now I've seen Steve's 'heritage'. Haven't heard Here & Now mentioned in a long time!  :blink:

 

[mrodoc]

Here and Now eh! I hadn't heard of them until i was involved in a 'who knows the most obscure bands' session in France last year. I was so impressed I went and bought an album of theirs. I think I managed to surprise him with Ozric Tentacles and Tinariwen. The music on More People... is very Tangerine Dream like and this might be because Steve had  collaborated with an ex member in the past. On the international congress trip in Australia last year we watched a cello recital in Jenolan Caves (I think I have some video of that somewhere). Then there is an album by Andreas Vollenweider the electric harpist entitled Caverna Magica that is worth a listen.

 

[pwhole]

I saw Here & Now probably around 1983 in an extremely fungal situation - they were a hippy outfit strongly associated with Daevid Allen and Gong, and not too bad, all things considered! I've seen Tinariwen somewhere too, but I think they were also on Jools Holland a few years ago. I saw the reference to the collaboration with the Tangerine Dream member - that's pretty impressive. I'm still surprised how little 'cave music' there is - as in, created for or inspired by caves, as opposed to just a band playing live in one, good though that is. I guess it's a pretty specialised interest after all. I'm just about to check out this Andreas Vollenweider album as it's on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJdrTEHx_Zw

 

[Pitlamp]

This is fascinating - I may have to try and get a copy, especially now I've seen Steve's 'heritage'. Haven't heard Here & Now mentioned in a long time!  :blink:

You have a PM.